Of course. Sorry.
I'll go back to the President's address.
On his first day after inauguration, President Obama addressed his staff, saying that:
Our commitment to openness means more than simply informing the American people about how decisions are made. It means recognizing that government does not have all the answers, and that public officials need to draw on what citizens know. ... I’m directing members of my administration to find new ways of tapping the knowledge and experience of ordinary Americans--scientists and civic leaders, educators and entrepreneurs--because the way to solve the problem of our time is...by involving the American people in shaping the policies that affect their lives.
On December 8, 2009, the Obama administration issued the open government directive, with the goal of creating a culture of transparency, participation, and collaboration in and among federal agencies that will transform the relationship between government and its citizens.
In responding to the President’s request of all agencies and departments, the National Archives developed its own open government plan. And in keeping with his open government initiative, we are working to encourage more participation and collaboration in our work, both within our staff and especially with the public. An example is our citizen archivist program.
My experience in libraries over the years convinced me that we learn more about our holdings when researchers help us better understand and describe what we have. These researchers may be interested in a particular person, event, or period in American history and become more familiar with our records than the busy professional archivists. And they can be of great help in writing descriptions of these records in collaboration with our professional staff. This is a way the public can make major contributions in describing and understanding the records being preserved for their use.
Besides this interaction with citizen archivists, our open government plan strengthens the culture of open government at the National Archives, develops web and data services to meet our 21st century needs, strengthens transparency at the National Archives, and provides leadership and services to enable the federal government to meet 21st century needs. Our government-wide 2010 employee viewpoint survey was the first step to improving employee engagement.
The results of this survey created a baseline for improvements that will be made in the areas of employee engagement in open government activities. We published a strategic human capital plan, highlighting the human capital challenges facing the National Archives. Our internal open government working group looked at a variety of ways to increase employee engagement and reduce barriers for innovation within the agency.
Over the past 18 months the National Archives has worked to develop presences on Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, and Twitter. We are looking to expand on these, as well as monitor new media where the public may expect to hear from us across our records. In the process of developing this open government plan we engaged the public using a social voting platform called IdeaScale.
We developed our open government forum and closely monitored ideas, comments, and votes. As our internal open government working group met, we carefully considered each idea and the feasibility of executing each idea. Our flagship initiative for open government is to develop online services to meet our 21st century needs. We intend to move the National Archives toward increased online participation and collaboration with the public by a social media strategy that includes developing our current catalogue into a social catalogue that allows our users to contribute information about our holdings.
We will also develop streamlined search capabilities for our online holdings that will unlock online records from previously stove-piped systems. We redesigned archives.gov to be more user-focused, and we approach digitization strategically as well as transparently with the ultimate goal of providing greater access to our holdings online.
Other ways in which we advance open government involve three important offices within NARA that have government-wide responsibilities. They are the National Declassification Center, the Office of Government Information Services, and the Information Security Oversight Office.
In the National Declassification Center we are reviewing, on an expedited basis, a backlog of about 400 million pages of records that have been classified for years. The goal is to declassify as many of them as possible. Records with high public interest and those with a high likelihood of being declassified are getting priority. Each year we accession 15 million additional pages of classified information, creating the potential for a future backlog. That’s why it’s important for us to eliminate the current backlog and develop a plan to avoid future backlogs.
The National Declassification Center oversees all this work with the motto “releasing all we can, protecting what we must”.
In September 2009 we established the Office of Government Information Services, which monitors activity government-wide under the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. Its mission is to improve the FOIA process and resolve disputes between federal agencies and FOIA requesters. Described by Congress as the FOIA ombudsman, this office is specifically charged with reviewing policies and procedures and compliance with the act by departments and agencies. And it recommends to Congress and the President any changes needed to improve FOIA administration. We work with the Department of Justice as well as with other agencies, requesters, and freedom-of-information advocates to find ways to make the act more effective and efficient.
Our Information Security Oversight Office oversees the classification programs of government and industry, ensuring public access where appropriate, but safeguarding national security information. This office also reviews requests for original classification authority from agencies, and does on-site inspections to monitor compliance with security requirements. Not all sensitive information is classified, however, and this office is leading the effort to reform the system for managing sensitive but unclassified or controlled unclassified information.
This open government initiative is also the trigger for the culture change here at the National Archives. We are implementing a plan to transform ourselves into an agency focused on the new and ever-growing needs of both our customers and our staff in a quickly changing digital era. These transformations include working as one NARA, not just as component parts; embracing the primacy of electronic information in all facets of our work and positioning NARA to lead accordingly; fostering a culture of leadership, not just as a position but as the way we all conduct our work; transforming NARA into a great place to work through trust and empowerment of all of our staff, the agency’s most vital resource; creating structures and processes to allow our staff to more effectively meet the needs of our customers; and opening our organizational boundaries to learn from others.
We now have a transformation launch team implementing the plan for the reorganization, but a reorganized agency will not in itself change things. The change will come from our staff--the best and brightest there are--equipped with the proper tools in an environment where success is possible.
Mr. Murphy, I thank you for this opportunity and I look forward to your questions.